This is Later with Lee Matthews, The Lee Matthews Podcast more what you Hear
weekday Afternoons on the Drive. Chris Moody is a writer based out of Chattanoogatuchu,
Tennessee. His works appeared in The Washington Post, Outside Magazine c and
in Politics and many many more. He's the host of a unique new podcast
called Finding Matt Drudge. Chris Moody, I didn't know he was lost.
It's great to be here. Yeah, he is somebody who was very prominent
for many many years. Certainly when he broke major stories, including the Montic
Lwinsky Bill Clinton relationship scandal in the late nineteen nineties, he was heavily exposed.
He was a person on television, had his own show, had his
own radio show, was on Letterman. And then suddenly no one saw him
again. He stopped appearing in public, he stopped having being photographed, he
stopped doing interviews, and over the last ten twelve years, people just haven't
seen him. And so people wondered what has happened to Matt Drudge? Is
he still alive? Does he still run his website? The answer to both
is yes, but yeah, he's a curious enigma, someone with great hour
in media to this day, but who we don't hear from. And so
our podcast Finding Matt Drudge wanted to understand him more, why he disappeared,
and what he thinks about the current state of politics and media. I can
only imagine now. My exposure to him was he was the go to guy.
Everybody had him his website, the Drudge Report, linked on their web
on their computers, and you would check it hourly to see if there was
a headline and his little flashing red light at the top of the page because
if something we're breaking, he always had it first before anybody else. And
even when the left was accusing him of no, that's not true, that's
not true, it always turned out to be an accurate story. It very
often did. And I'll tell you he was the assigned editor. Not just
for conservative radio pundits or Fox News. This was media wide, conservative,
middle of the road liberal. Everyone was reading the Drudge Report. I spoke
with members of the Hillary Clinton campaign staff who said that they always had to
be reading the Drudge Report all the time because mainstream reporters would constantly be calling
them and asking them about articles that they had read on the Drudge Report.
Now, they would never say it, they'd always say I heard this on
the wire, but they really, And so even on yeah right, even
on the left, people were reading him. Also, I spoke with Matt
Drudge's editor who worked for him for four years, named Joseph Kurl, and
he said the primary website that people went to after the Drudge Report was the
liberal Huffington Post. So liberals were passing through there all the time. And
he would effect not just what was read on the Rush Limbaugh Show later that
day, but also what appeared on ABCNBCCBS. He had immense power and that
spread across political lines. Do you think a lot of his success was due
to rush Limbaugh because Rush Limbaugh quoted him almost constantly. I certainly think it
helped. But I think his success was a fewfold. One was breaking news.
He had scoops that no one else had, you couldn't find anywhere else,
and he wasn't afraid to release that information quickly and efficiently. You could
read it really quickly, you didn't have to sit down for a ten thousand
word article or anything like that. But also he had such a great has
such a great nose for new you can go to that website and find a
flurry of stories from sites you might never read, and expose yourself to such
fascinating things. Whereas today in the current year, when we are reading the
news, it's often dictated by an algorithm through some tech company social media app.
It's a robot, whereas the Drudge Report is a living, breathing human
being with fascinating, interesting, curious tastes. And I think it's that level
of taste that makes it continue to be interesting, because we're living these algorithmic
lives that are so flattened and boring that even though the Drudge Report hasn't changed
its design or font in twenty five years, still remains intriguing because of that.
Chris Moody, host of the podcast Finding Matt Drudge Hurt on the iHeartRadio
app and everywhere you get podcasts, The man must never sleep. You know,
he used to never sleep because he was running that site largely on his
own. Yeah, he was somebody that spent hours and hours on his computer,
and I think it took a toll on his body. That's certainly what
friends had said. And then in the two thousands he started to hire staff.
Andrew Breitbart was an editor of The Drudge Report for a while, and
a number of other people as well that would take the load off, and
they'd come in at seven o'clock in the morning and they'd upload new links and
then continue to refresh the site with new content till about noon. Then Drudge
would take over the afternoon shift or some arrangement like that, and so he
was able to get get help. But he certainly continues to have his hand
deeply in things, and he would change things that he didn't like that the
editor would do, but you know, largely remained hands off with those guys.
But yeah, he's somebody who travels around the world quite often. He
likes to have people not know where he is geographically, but he always keeps
his eye on East Coast time USA because he's on you know, American news
time no matter where he is. We know he likes to travel to Israel
and is all over the US, And so, yeah, he's he's a
guy that's always online and has been before we were online. He's somebody who
had laptops that connected into the Internet wherever he was in the world before any
of us even had it in our homes. So fascinating guy. Chris Moody.
He's the host of the podcast Finding Matt Drudge about Matt Drudge, And
you keep mentioning editing, editing, editing. That's one thing he really knew
how to do, very very well. Where did he get his start?
You know, it's not an orthodox start. He grew up near Washington,
d C. And the shadow of the Great news titaned the Washington Post.
But he was not really an academic kind of student. He didn't have the
academic pedigree that would lead him into the elite newsrooms like the Washington Post.
So he went out to California and he became somebody that just managed the CBS
store at the CBS studios. But he got his start because he noticed in
the garbage can that producer or people in the news or in the TV industry
were throwing away the ratings list before they were made public, and he picked
those out of the trash and published them on his own and his website.
His little website in the early mid nineteen nineties was where you could find out
where the Hollywood or the TV ratings were first. And once he started scooping
people, he started getting people giving him sources giving him information and that led
to him talking to a lot of people in Washington. That led him to
breaking news about the relationship between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton that really launched him
and all of a sudden without going through the mainstream news channels where he was
shut out. Originally, he was beating them at their own game, and
he decided instead of joining them, he would continue to beat them and has
done so for twenty five years, marching to the beat of his own drum.
Chris Moody Finding Matt Drudge is the name of the podcast. It's about
Matt Drudge, the famous newsman and a blogger, if you will. He
was a blogger before bloggers were cool, that's for sure. And that's the
other thing I wanted to ask you. You know, you read about and
learned about Woodard and Bernstein in journalism school, and how many sources they had
and how many dark rooms and parking garages they would meet these sources in.
Did Matt Drudge have his own selection of those? His dark parking garage was
aol instant messenger that for many years was where you could talk to Matt Drudge.
You could send him links, you could send him scoop and he would
engage with you. He would speak with you back. He was very involved
in AOL chat rooms in the early years, and then throughout the two thousands,
continued on AOL insta messenger as far as I know, all the way
until it was shut down just a couple of years ago. And he still
has an AOL email address, which is kind of a status symbol at this
point to have such a legacy email address. But that's that's where he got
a lot of his scoops. But he also would go to Washington and he
would meet with sources in restaurants in those big booths, and they would hand
him packets of information. That's certainly where he got the information about Monica Lewinsky
was in person. So it was a mix of digital but also that kind
of cloak and dagger parking garage, you know, dark shadow reporting, which
any reporter in Washington that is broken a story has done things like that,
and that's how you have to get information because there's lots of eyes and ears
in that city and you've got to protect your sources, and in many cases
Matt Drudge did. He certainly did, and that you could see it on
his Drudge Report, among his other creations. Matt Drudge Finding Matt Drudge is
the podcast heard on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere you get podcasts. Chris Moody
is the host, and Chris I thank you for joining us today. It
was great to be here, Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening
to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen
to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation